#ixd501

[sayskez]

IXD501 Table of Contents

Major Project: The Arcadia Report

All Major Project Posts

Final Prototype

Final Alpha Prototype: Welcome to Arcadia

Promotional Website

Research & Summary Booklets

Iterative Prototyping

All Prototype Posts

Gameplay Paper Prototype

Prototype

User Testing

Style Test

Iterations

Final Visual Test

HTML Prototype

Version 1

User Testing

Version 2

Location Test

Marvel Version

Figma Version: Part 1 & Part 2

Complete Wireframes

Initial

Wireflows

Full Clue Flow

Onboarding (final alpha prototype)

Full onboarding

Secrets

Product Concept

Project Ideation and Concepts

Week 1: Three Ideas

Week 3: Mini-Pitch

Project Planning

Research & Development

Market Research

All Competitive Reviews

Her Story

Heavy Rain

Device 6

Hunt a Killer: Review & Brand Audit & User Feedback

HiddenCity

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective

User Research

Survey Analysis

User Personas

Empathy Maps

Customer Journey Maps

Game Design & Research

Narrative & Content Design

Narrative Research

Content Design

Branding & Visual Grammar

Branding

Visual Grammar

Moodboard

Promotional Website

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RSA Brief

All RSA research & development posts

Brainstorming

RSA One-Day Workshop

System Research & Design

Branding

User Research

Survey Analysis

Vending Machine Stakeout: Part 1 & Part 2

Product Design

Final Pitch

[loisgordon]

Major Project Idea Generation - Idea 2

Interactive Story Book

Overview

The idea is an interactive story which would be read to a child accompained by an adult. The story book would come with a pack of characters and cards that help unlock/reveal parts of the story. The story would link to each object and it would be adults responsibility to place or post the objects in the correct place at the correct timing to the story. A guide to this would be provided with the pack.

Location based triggers could be included in the story and it would be a task for the user/reader to get to the location of the NFC trigger, for example, it could be attached to the front door and be triggered by going outside. It depends on the storyline where this kind of trigger would fit it.

Other triggers could be on the characters themselves, where the user/reader would have to hold their device toward the correct character/find the character where the adult has hidden them and clues would be revealed through the post provided on cards.

Additional narrative content on near field communication (NFC) tags could be part of the story too, it makes the story more of an adventure than just sitting and just reading.

There could also be opportunities to interact with characters to influence the storyline and develop the characters further. Developing the characters would lead to popular merch and creating a main character.

Storyline ideas include:

An animal escaping from the zoo, different animals ask for the readers help to find their missing friend. The goal is tracking down the evidence of the missing animal through the clues etc - the message of the story could include how animals are becoming endangered & extinct

A character who goes on adventures and the book tells the story of one of their adventures. The user/reader has to find the key/different objects to help the adventurer along their journey.

Other ideas could stem around, animals, space, pirates and adventures with a main character. I would like to focus on something that is suitable for an young audience

Pros

Illustration is one of my strong points, I want to show that in my Major Project so this idea is a good way to put that to use.

Print design/layout is something I have experience in

If I create an Ebook, I have some experience with with motion design (the basics of After Effects/animating illustrations) and some animation could be added to it

Cons

I've never made any plush toys or plastic figures, so these would have to be outsourced and could be expensive

Story writing is something I have minimal experience in, so could be challenging

Only vaguely familiar with target audience, would require deeper thought and research into what children are interested in & enjoy

How might we build it?

Using print design I could design and print the book

I could create an ebook (this gives the book more possibilites)

Or there could be both - an ebook & printed book

NFC chips placed in the book itself, characters & objects

Who's it for?

The target audience would be families with a child/children between the ages of 3 and 6

The target sales audience would be the parents and the children, the adults are the buyers

What's the business model?

1 time purchase for the book & character/card pack

possibly an expansion pack for additional characters/unlock more chapters

[thedoggotracker]

Digital Inspiration Clean minimal UI Designs with great use of bold colours to complement the digital features throughout this app. 

[sayskez]

The Visual Grammar of MS-DOS

MS-DOS, an acronym for the Microsoft Disk Operating System, was an operating system released in 1981. Based off the command line, it began to diminish thanks once Windows 3.0 released with a GUI and the rise of graphical user interfaces on personal computers.

However, MS-DOS was still packaged with the operating systems for troubleshooting and launching old software. Even though it no longer exists, the modern command line interface is still from the same roots and aesthetically not worlds apart.

Key Elements of the Aesthetic

Text Driven - Hierarchy is determined mainly by colour, capitalisation, and spacing.

Dark UI - That old school terminal haze dominates, with a dark background and light text (normally white).

High Contrast - Matching the dark theme, if there is colour it tends to come in a bright white, blue, green, or orange which stands out on the dark background. Different colours are generally used sparingly and only for clearly defined meanings (such as errors).

Narrative:

Arcadia should feel timeless so that it can feel real and modern while rooted in the mystery of its past. MS-DOS and command line interfaces are perfect for this, capturing the 80s-90s tech aesthetic but also still underlying in most tech today.

The fact that MS-DOS still released with later software and was used for bootstrapping or troubleshooting when the GUI failed makes this kind of aesthetic the perfect narrative fit for Arcadia: capturing the idea that the software is broken and maybe had a GUI portion which you are trying to restore.

This gives me all sorts of ideas for how it might be presented: potentially even glitching to show the GUI at different points as you restore parts of the database.

Onboarding could be a fake install/boot up of the Arcadia database using a faux command line interface style.

[sayskez]

Snatched

Ah, the joys of design: when you can come home and watch Netflix while calling it research.

As part of my research for my major project (and actually my dissertation too), I’ve been exploring interactive and/or immersive stories and games. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Netflix’s new(ish) interactive film, is an interesting example. It caused quite the stir when it came out and rekindled public awareness of ‘choose your own adventure’ books which have been around far longer than Netflix. It even scooped up 2 Emmys at this year’s awards! But I wasn’t watching it just for that or the story, I wanted to see how they handled transforming film, traditionally a linear and non-interactive medium, into a participatory experience.

Liked:

Sets the context first: Netflix doesn’t just throw you in, there is a short, almost onboarding segment explaining that this is an interactive film, how choices work, and opportunity to test it out. A nice touch for those coming in blind that I hadn’t considered, being familiar with the premise already.

When you hit an ‘ending’, you can choose to be thrown back to the last crucial junction so you can explore alternative paths.

The set design is really nice and I took lots of screenshots for the artefact design especially. Potential inspiration there for my own game!

Didn’t Like:

Choices don’t always feel meaningful or, on the other end of the spectrum, feel incredibly swinging (destroy computer or don’t... aka ‘instant end’ or ‘keep playing’). For a ‘choose your own adventure’ story, those feel more like non-choices.

You can replay endings but as far as I could see there is no way to choose a point to hop back to. I wanted to explore another path I read about after my first watch but couldn’t find a way to get back to that decision point without rewatching up until that point (which I did not want to do).

On the same note, there’s little sense of completion for people approaching it as an interactive story/game vs an interactive film. In the case of the former, I want to know how many endings I have discovered and jump into explore others. Instead I don’t even know how much time I have left to watch or a clue which path I am on.

Regarding the story: this one is unique to the path I ended up on during my first watch but I did not like fourth wall breaking in the story. Completely broke any immersion.

All in all, I like the concept more than the execution from a story/choose your own adventure perspective. As a work of film and new, interactive media though, I think it’s cool to see these kind of projects produced by Netflix and garnering such attention. It’s exactly that growing trend towards stories as immersive, interactive experiences that I want to capitalise on with my project.

[sayskez]

The Graphic Posters of Bráulio Amado

Bráulio Amado is Portugese graphic designer/illustrator/designer supreme. His work ranges from New York Times and WIRED to artist collaborations with Frank Ocean and Beck. My sister first introduced me to his work and I loved the kinetic, often colourful designs which mixed a feeling of handcraftedness with digital grunge. However, it wasn’t until looking at his posters again that I realised some of the pieced together style, signboard typography, and bold layouts actually could be relevant for The Arcadia Report.

In particular:

I love the various signboard, tickets, stamp, 90s computer style typographic layouts. They feel like a surreal artefact without any of the photorealism or skeuomorphic design. This is the kind of style I would love to achieve for the files in The Arcadia Report.

Overlapping text, missing letters, blank spaces - what’s missing from the layout becomes as important as what is there. It feels full even when empty.

Bold graphic style meshing seamlessly with illustrations and photographs - One of my concerns was how to maintain realism while treading carefully around where to go illustrated vs photographic (and how to make both feel natural and not like cheap stock images). Braulio’s posters are an excellent example of mixing all while feeling natural and timeless.

[sayskez]

Brand Audit: DEVICE 6

DEVICE 6 was the first app I ever spent money on. Zero regrets. Even 6 years on, there is still nothing quite like it on any device. The style is impeccable, the central conceit so simple yet so revolutionary and effective: the written word is your map. You must pan in all sorts of direction to follow trailing type which might form staircases or branching paths as you rotate your phone in every direction and become utterly engrossed.

Eurogamer’s review sums it up well:

"DEVICE 6 is designed to linger in the mind long after the last code has been cracked and the last sentence read. Spy stories - even traditional ones - often haunt their readers' dreams once they've been completed. It's only appropriate, really. Is that a final full-stop or a microdot? Is this the end of the affair or an invitation to go deeper?"

Eurogamer - 9/10

Brand Style

Surreal

Mysterious

1950s spy aesthetic

Grainy television

Key Phrases

“A surreal thriller in which the written word is your map”

“…plays with the conventions of games and literature, entwines story with geography and blends puzzle and novella, to draw players into an intriguing mystery of technology and neuroscience.”

Brand Dictionary

Surreal

Thriller

Intriguing

Mystery

Bizarre

Puzzle

The actual visual style of DEVICE 6 is quite apart from what I picture for The Arcadia Report, but if I could achieve something with even a fraction of the engrossing, immersive feel and simple but so effective gameplay of DEVICE 6, I would be pleased.

[ernestsdesign]

App Prototype

The app is laid out in this way;

Loading screen

Introduction

Account Creation

Home

Exercise Tutorial

Exercise

Record (manually) Progress

(updated) Home

Exercise progress

This is how the app currently operates. It still in it's prototyping stage where more information and all exercises will be added. I will need to polish up the way these pages look and begin filming each exercise soon to add onto here. Im not yet sure how or if its possible to add videos into this prototype but this will need minor research later on. Im thinking about taking away the greyish background within the account creation page because it makes the page look a bit strange. I think I will also change the amount of space between the content, I feel like it is odd at times even though I followed the same-amount-of-space formula for all pages.

I feel like the introduction of the feedback page after exercises is good because people would click onto the "exercise complete" button only to be met with no response. This way they can see how far they've come throughout the weeks and obviously with more weeks the graph will become more of a sight to behold!